I’m planning a diorama and I want to include in it a Sherman with a splattered, muddy, dirty body. But I don’t want to overdo it![:D] My qeustion is not so much what to use and how to apply it, but how to color it! There’re a lot of earth tones to consider if the tank is rolling through a grassy, forested area with just a little standing water here and there. Then there are additional colors to think about if the monster is moving along a muddy road swamped with heavy rain. And, of course, there is snow…
How do you all get the various colors added for these clumps and splatters? I know there are lots of items in my LHS for this, pigments and soil materials for train hobbyists, etc. But I don’t really have the money for all of these. I do have a few tubes of oil paints, a set of pastels (that I sand down for the powder), and colored pencils to work with. What’s the best way to do this? Even if someone could point me to a tutorial that might answer the coloration question, I would be grateful. Any help would be appreciated. I have build a lot of planes, but also have a hankering to do some armor and some dioramas, so I need to learn a few things.
There’s products on the market that will texturize- one is called Liquitex. One $8 tub will go a long way. You can find them anywhere artist’s supplies are sold. I have some for making water (gloss gel medium), dirt build-up (sand texture, stucco texture). The point to this stuff is to give texture and body to paint, so adding the earth tones is OK. Add static grass if you want. If you don’t want to use paints, use natural soils and sand, sifted through a sieve down to the smallest particles.
You can thin it down with water, and build it up in layers of different tones. The stuff I use is meant for acrylic paints, though. You can use the cheapo, .45¢ craft acrylics like Anita. Wouldn’t mix with oils, but a wash after drying is fine.
For shortgrass: Woodland Scenics static grass. I have the “Medium Green” and “Harvest Gold” and mix the two in a ratio as desired based upon the time of year I’m modeling.
For long/tallgrass: either Woodland Scenics tall grass (various colors as desired) or natural color hemp twine, straightened and cut to length.
For mud: acrylic craft paint (I use Apple Barrel from Wal Mart) mixed to the desired color (it will dry a little lighter in tone than when it’s wet). Add sand and a little watered down drywall compound (plaster) to make a muddy slurry and apply with an old paintbrush. For clumps of sod, add a little static grass. For mud splatter, use a toothpick to flick the “muddy” bristles and create an actual splatter pattern. Do this carefully and a little at a time, then step back and look at it because it is easy to go too far too quickly! Once dry, I drybrush MM Acryl “Armor Sand” to show the initial drying stages of the outer mud. I also drybrush Armor Sand for dust.
For snow: Woodland Scenics product. I actually mix this into a generous blob of white glue (add a drop or two of water as needed) and apply with an old paintbrush. For snow buildup ON something, I lightly brush white glue where I want the snow to be, then sprinkle a pinch of the WS Snow on the glue, then press it into the glue. Let dry and gently blow off excess or turn it upside down and gently tap off excess.
The Tamiya range of paints has two colors I use for weathering all the time: Earth (XF-52) and Buff (XF-57).
Earth is a very convincing damp mud color, and Buff really looks like dry mud and dust. I don’t use Tamiya paints for much else, but I go through a lot of these colors.
I’d go with Steve’s suggestions. Go to an artist’s supply shop and check out the different acrylic additives. Liquitex is one brand, Golden is another, Gamblin is another. They all have things to add texture and body to acrylic paint. And while you are in there get a series of Earth colours…raw umber, burnt umber, raw sienna, burnt sienna, rec ochre, yellow ochre etc etc. If you have a good range of these paints then you can mix any colour you like and are not limited to what a manufacturer puts into a jar to simulate the ground. To paint a face you wouldn’t use a pot of paint labelled “flesh” Experiment and enjoy the range of effects you can achieve.
Find a construction site nearby, preferably one with a bulldozer still on it. Take some pictures of any and all of the equipment you can. That’s what I do. Do your weathering off of the pics and it will eliminate a lot of the “Over Do” that invariably happens when you weather randomly.